From private vehicles to the water taxi, transportation in Trinidad and Tobago is multifaceted. As a society, we face issues like congestion, lack of access to reliable public transportation, and the problems that stem from these. Having been involved in the transportation industry as a transportation engineer for over 40 years, Dr Trevor Townsend, Senior Lecturer in Traffic and Transportation Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, sheds some light on our system, the pros and cons, and possible improvements that can be made.
UT: What does a transportation engineer do?
TT: The role of the transportation engineer is to intervene deliberately and delicately in the transportation system and, by so doing, ensure that it fulfills the needs of society, providing linkages between activities that are spatially separated. So we need transportation because we need to go from point A to point B in a way that is as efficient as possible, as environmentally friendly as possible, and in a sustainable fashion. Transportation engineering is about planning, organising, and managing all that in a way that can be sustained. Transportation engineers ask “why do I have to design this?” “How does this fit into the entire transportation system?” So, therefore, the transportation engineer has an overarching view of the transportation system.
UT: How would you describe our transportation system?
TT: We have the elements of the system, but as can be experienced on a daily basis, we don’t seem to have any overall planning, organisation, and management of the system. In short, it’s not organised in a very systematic way. And that is something which has been going on for a long time.
UT: How has COVID-19 changed our system?
TT: COVID has significant impacts, especially if you think about the impact on public transportation. We did have a dramatic fall-off in the movement of people when we went into lockdown, and as such, a dramatic fall-off in the transportation of people. However, to an extent, as societies have opened up, that has also reverted, not quite to the pre-COVID levels. The need to be physically distant is a huge burden on the supply of public transportation. And this is a very significant problem that we are going to have to systematically work to overcome because societies all around the world have recognised that in terms of the movement of people, the private motorcar is one of the most inefficient ways. What we need is a clear policy, and planning, to move towards having a more robust transportation system.
UT: What are the pros of the current system?
TT: As for the pros, we have a well-developed road network. All major areas in Trinidad and Tobago are reachable within the road network system, although there are different levels of quality of roads. Another positive is that we have a robust private sector that provides public transportation in the maxi-taxi system. It is a very good system and should be supported, improved, and further developed.
UT: What are the cons of the current system?
TT: There are some significant negatives, but the problems that we face are not insurmountable. The needs we have can be serviced, but they have to be organised and managed in a deliberate way.
The two main issues we have are [firstly], the lack of institutions and/or organisations that are mandated with the task of transportation engineering. We need a planning and design arm [of existing ministries] that understands and evaluates both current and expected needs and what we have to do to fill them. And we also need an organisation that is responsible for public transportation with that same kind of concept.
[Congestion is the second major issue]. Out of a survey performed in Trincity, data showed that 97 percent of households had one car and over 57 percent had two or more cars. And this is a community that is close to public transportation [the Priority Bus Route]. Therefore, what is driving people’s decisions is the lack of confidence in the public transportation system. From another survey, the average occupancy ratio of persons to private vehicles on a highway is 1.3 persons per car. It can’t work efficiently that way.
UT: Are there specific time points in our nation’s development that presented opportunities to fix some of these issues?
TT: There are always opportunities. We have been living these problems. [We need] to ask ourselves if there is a better way to do it. Anytime we have congestion, we have wastage of time. Nobody gains from the time you have spent there. This is considered a consumer loss. You have to manage and plan your way out of this. So any decision-maker who comes and says they want to deal with this congestion but doesn’t want to take a medium to long-term view, then they are not prepared to address the issue. There is always an opportunity for a decision-maker to say “I want to do it differently”. So far, we have generally not taken the medium to long-term approach.
UT: What does the public policy offer by means of expanding the transportation system?
TT: There is a Vision 2030 document that is very expansive, but documents are just there until an action plan is created. Successive governments have had “draft” transportation policies. I call them draft because since 1967, there hasn’t been one that has been approved and agreed upon by the government on a national level. I have been involved in three so far; 1984, 1996, and 2010. These documents are already there. Things may have worsened but the main problems have not changed. Let us now develop some action plans and then start to take action to expand the transportation system. The only way you will get low-hanging fruit is if you planted a tree five years ago.
UT: On average, how long will it take and what is the monetary investment that could help to mitigate some of the chronic problems we have?
TT: To start to create this change, major capital investment is not needed. We can implement a proper bus rapid transit system on the Priority Bus Route [PBR] as a short-term initiative. We already have the road, although we need to improve the intersections and this can be done at a fairly low cost.
In conjunction with the Association of Professional Engineers, we did a proposal on this to the Ministry of Planning. The planning would cost between $3-4 million and implementation costs inclusive of stations, etc would amount to $100 million over time. The government spends about $400 million on public transportation each year. And this will have an impact on pollution, congestion, safety – all those things.
The [PBR] was always meant to be a low volume, high speed route, and when you put private cars on the bus route, you are disadvantaging the public transportation users. Without private cars on the PBR, the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) could transport about 40 percent more passengers at no additional cost. These are the uncomfortable truths we have to face as a society. Essentially, we are saying that these people who cannot afford a car (that is why they are utilising public transport) are less important than those who we think have privilege.
